19 January 2011

Pen Pals

Back home I did a lot of babysitting.... and by a lot, I really mean a lot. In the last couple of years I got really close with a family with 3 children (so close that I actually have their address listed as my "permanent" address since we sold our house before left).

Anyways, one of the first students I met when coming to Varatic was a girl named Olivia. Actually, I first met her grandfather, then I heard about her, then I met her. I thought this was great because one of the kids of this aforementioned family is named Olivia. So I thought I should get them set up as pen-pals... but then decided to take it a step further and get their whole 4th grade class involved with some of the students at my school.

Although it took some time to get it started (miscommunication on the part of the KS teacher and me.. oops!), it finally got started and now the kids are jumping out of their seats waiting for a new letter to come.

Due to the fact that actual letters tend to get lost en route from America to Moldova, we decided to do things another way by taking advantage of the technology we have today. The kids write letters, give them to us (the teachers), we scan them, then e-mail them to the other teacher who then prints them off and passes them out to the corresponding students. It works great, and it's fast, and the kids still get the letter writing experience with a modern twist to it.

So today my host dad was having a tutoring lesson with two of the 6th graders who correspond with letters: Olivia, and another boy. So I emailed the teacher in Kansas to see if they had skype at school and a webcam... and they did. So Olivia and Vadim got to skype with their pen pals for a few minutes, and then the camera was turned on to other students who had questions for them.

It was such a fun cultural exchange, and my heart was basically beating out of my chest in excitement to be able to do this!! Now I just hope to get more kids involved... we just have to figure out the time difference thing.


2 comments:

  1. Hey! So I've been glancing over your blog as I get more and more anxious waiting to hear from Peace Corps. I got my nomination a while back for teaching English in Eastern Europe leaving in June 2011 but haven't heard much since. i was just wondering - do you remember whenabouts you received your invitation? Having some better sense would help me feel a bit better. Thanks for your help!!!

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  2. Hey!!!! i got mine in March... 6 weeks before I left...but some people received theirs around Christmas time! So you just really have to be patient because mine was literally 6 weeks to the day before departure!

    ... and you're probably coming here or Ukraine, just fyi! Keep in touch!

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